


The Fish-Child

by GriegPlants



Category: Original Work
Genre: Family Dynamics Between Humans and Nonhumans, Fishing, Gen, Intergenerational family dynamics, Sea Monsters, Unspecified Setting, scrimshaw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23135584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GriegPlants/pseuds/GriegPlants
Summary: An old woman goes for a walk along the shore and finds something unusual.
Relationships: Monster Child & Human Family that Adopted Them
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24
Collections: Teratophilia Trade 2020





	The Fish-Child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/gifts).



There once was an old woman who lived in a village by the sea. When she was young, she had been well-known for her skill at scrimshaw, in which no one in the village had been her equal. But as she aged, her hands grew unsteady and she was no longer able to carve the fine lines into bone and shell.

The old woman lived with her nephew and his wife. She had tried to teach her nephew to scrimshaw when he was young, but he did not have the talent for it. When he had married, she had been glad for the chance to pass on her knowledge to his wife, but she was no more able than he to make the tiny ships and sea creatures appear from the surface of the bone. So the old woman grew older still, and the village was sad to have lost her artistry, for it was believed that a fine piece of scrimshaw fixed to the stern of a boat would keep those within safe from storms and other dangers.

One day, as the old woman was walking on the beach along the line of the tide, she saw gulls circling and picking at a small, dark shape in the sand. They did not land to eat whatever it was, but flitted here and there, diving down to plunge their beaks at it and then leaping into the air again.

Thinking that perhaps they had found a dead sea-turtle washed up on the shore and were trying to pluck its flesh from its great shell, she headed towards the shape. Her family could use a larger pot for fish stew, and like all the fisherfolk of the village her nephew and his wife would not capture a living sea-turtle for its shell, for the creatures were said to be good luck. But when she reached the shape on the beach, she saw it was not a sea-turtle.

Half-buried in the sand, it had dull green scales like a fish and four spindly limbs, two of which ended in ridged pincers like a crab. Its mouth was wide and held the long, thin teeth of a deep-sea creature. Small tears from the gulls’ beaks speckled its body, and its great flat eyes were clouded over with a dead white haze.

The old woman thought it must be one of the fish-devils that sometimes rose out of the sea on stormy days and harried or sunk the boats of unlucky fisherfolk, but those were said to be huge monsters taller than the tallest man in the village, with thick limbs to carry heavy spears of black iron. This corpse was no larger than a cat, and its body looked almost too fragile for the weight of its oversized head.

Shooing away the gulls, the old woman bent down by the dead creature and, curious, reached out a finger to feel the tip of a razor tooth. She was surprised when the thing twitched and the white haze over its eyes parted sideways like an eyelid, revealing a flat black sphere ringed in pale yellow. A faint gurgling hiss issued from between the long teeth, and spidery arms beat weakly against the sand.

She sat back in consternation as the fish-thing flailed pointlessly where it lay. Looking around now, she saw a trail of dragging marks leading away from the sea, as though the creature had been creeping up the shore towards the sharp rocks and tidal pools where the sea met the foot of the mountains.

A gull swooped low over them, and the creature coiled up and shut its strange sideways eyelids again. The old woman waved away the bird and, after a moment’s thought, picked up the fish-thing and carried it up the beach towards the rocks. It was very light, and wriggled slightly as she held it, but its struggles quickly grew fainter and eventually it lay still, its only movement the blinking of its pale eyelids.

Arriving at the rocks, the old woman found a tidal pool of medium size and placed the creature in it, on a shallow ledge where the water was not deep. She stepped back and waited to see what it would do. It did not move for a while, and then writhed slightly where it lay, but it seemed to lack the strength to do anything else.

The old woman watched it for a while, but it did nothing more. At last she picked it up again and walked back with it to the village.

‘What is that?’ asked her nephew when she brought it in the door.

‘I found it on the shore,’ she answered.

He came over to look more closely at the thing. ‘It looks like the fish-devils that plague the boats.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think it is a child.’

‘I have heard some of the fisherfolk talk about great grey eggs buried at the tideline that they believe come from the fish-devils,’ said her nephew, ‘but they are always broken and empty.’

‘It seemed to have been crawling toward the tide-pools when gulls set upon it,’ she said. ‘Perhaps that is where they go to grow large enough for the ocean.’

The fisherman filled a bowl with wet sand and they laid the creature in it. Then they tried to find something to feed it, but it would not eat dried fish or ground seaweed softened in water or the thick barley porridge. The old woman fetched fresh water for it to drink, but it would not touch this, only drinking seawater when she brought some to moisten the sand.

Her nephew’s wife came back from the docks with two buckets full of her catch. Once they had told her about the fish-child, she brought it fresh shrimp, and it broke their shells between its razor teeth and ate them. Soon it seemed to grow a little stronger, and could stand and climb out of the bowl.

The sky had grown dark, so they filled more bowls with sand and set them in a corner of the cottage, walling it off with old planks to waist-height. They placed the fish-child there with more seawater and shrimp, and an old blanket wrapped around one of the bowls in case the night grew cold, and then went to bed.

The old woman got up once in the night and saw a faint glow coming from the walled corner. The fish-child slept in a bowl of sand, and spots of light shone green along the ridge of its spine.

In the morning, the old woman set out with her nephew and his wife to the tidal pools at the foot of the mountains. They brought the fish-child along in a bucket of sand and water, and it peered over the edge as they walked, hissing quietly.

When they reached the tidal pools, the old woman set the bucket down and turned it gently onto its side. The fish-child waited inside for a few minutes, turning its head this way and that, before it carefully crept outside. Then it slid into the tidal pool and swam about, darting out of the pool and back in, making its strange gurgling hiss.

The old woman smiled and picked up the bucket, and the three villagers left to return home. But after a few minutes of walking, she looked back and saw a small dark shape following a little ways behind them. She stopped, and soon the shape caught up and she could see it was the fish-child. It flopped on the sand as it reached them, its scaly chest rising and falling quickly.

The three villagers looked at each other, mystified. The old woman picked up the fish-child and brought it back to the tidal pool. This time it would not go into the pool, but sat at the side, watching the villagers with its flat black eyes.

It followed them again when they left, though more slowly, falling behind as it grew tired. Eventually the old woman turned around and went back for it, and she carried it back to the village.

Her nephew brought some of the other fisherfolk over to look at the fish-child, but none of them had ever seen anything like it before and they had no advice to give. After they left, the old woman, her nephew, and his wife sat around the fire and talked about what to do. It did not seem like the fish-child would stay away by itself, and none of them wanted to trap or hurt it to keep it away. The fish-devils were destructive but clearly rational, with weapons and clothing and a harsh, hissing language of their own, so it stood to reason that one of their children would be as aware and intelligent as a human child.

The fish-child did not seem especially dangerous, as despite its long, sharp teeth it was very small. Perhaps it could have hurt a pet animal or a young child, but the only pets in the village were the cunning ships’ cats, who were more than capable of taking care of themselves. And the old woman’s nephew and his wife had no children, for many years ago they had lost a little daughter to sickness only a week after her birth, and they had not the heart to try again.

At last they decided they would keep the fish-child with them until it seemed willing to leave or perhaps until some of the fish-devils came looking for it, though none of the fisherfolk had ever seen those creatures come ashore. They gave it a name, Nishat, after one of the village’s founders.

Since the fish-devils did not have the same anatomy as humans, none of them had even the first idea of whether Nishat was male or female or something else. They decided to call it ‘he’ to make clear that they were not trying to replace the lost daughter. The fish-child did not seem to mind.

Things settled into place surprisingly well. During the day, the old woman would play with Nishat and walk around the village with him while her nephew and his wife went out on the fish-boats. At night, they would all gather by the fire and tell stories about times past and adventures out of myth. The fish-child would listen and seemed to understand, for he would sway left and right and hiss when the tale grew exciting.

One day it was storming hard outside and the old woman did not want to go for a walk. She had already played with Nishat for some hours and wanted to do something else, so she opened the ancient, cracked chest at the foot of her bed and took out the tools she used for scrimshaw, and a large, flat clamshell.

The fish-child watched curiously as she brought the scrimshaw things to the table and began to paint a thin coat of blue ink over the shell. That went easily enough. She took up her heavy, sharp needle and began to scribe a design on the shell, of a dolphin leaping from the waves in front of a rising sun, but the lines came out unsteady, rather than the strong, smooth curves she intended. The old woman sighed and placed the needle down, frustrated, leaning back in her chair.

She felt a light touch and looked back down to see a small pincer clasped around her finger. Nishat had climbed onto the bench beside her and was examining her shaking hand with a puzzled manner. He took hold of it with his other pincer as well and tried to drag it back to the shell.

She chuckled. ‘I fear it is no use, Nishat. I cannot hold the needle steady any more. It happens sometimes when one grows old.’

He let go of her hand and picked up the needle, laying it over her fingers and pushing them closed around it, then drawing back to see the result. Her fingers trembled, and the needle fell to the table. He picked it up and placed it in her hand again, but this time did not let go.

With a sigh, but also a smile, she tried again to scribe a curving line. The added weight of the fish-child’s pincers helped her hold the needle a little steadier, but the line still strayed from its intended path. She kept on regardless, and together they carved a wavering picture on the surface of the shell.

She coated it in ink again and then wiped away the excess, dark blue remaining only in the lines of her carving. It did not look like the work of a novice, as it was very detailed, but nor was it a fine piece by any standard. Still, it seemed to fascinate Nishat. He took it to the large box of sand the old woman’s nephew had built for him and placed it at one end, and then sat before it to peer closely at every detail.

The next day, the old woman rose and ate breakfast with her family before her nephew and his wife headed out to sea. She got out the wooden toys she used to play with Nishat, but the fish-child did not seem interested, so she sat down by the fire to crochet instead. The days were growing colder, and the fisherfolk would need thick mittens to protect their hands from the icy sea as they hauled in their nets. Also she wanted to make a sweater for Nishat, who seemed to get cold easily but did not like to sit too close to the flames. He was wearing garb of linen now, but that would not be enough for the winter.

She had barely begun to work when she felt a little pincer tugging at her shirt.

‘What is it? Do you want to play now?’ she asked. He shook his head, the pale yellow rings of his eyes glinting in the firelight. ‘Do you want something to eat?’

He shook his head again. A quiet, muttering sort of hiss slid between his teeth. Then: ‘Shell,’ he said. The word did not sound the same as it would coming from a human mouth, but she understood it well enough.

‘Oh! You want me to get out the scrimshaw again?’

He tugged at her excitedly, hissing ‘shell’ again and again. Laughing, she lifted him in one arm and went to fetch the supplies. They carved four shells that day, and when the two fisherfolk returned home at dusk, they were delighted both at Nishat’s hissing speech and at the scrimshaw, though it was no better than the shell of the day before.

Time seemed to pass quickly after that, and the fish-child grew taller and could speak as well as any of the villagers, though always in a hissing whisper. He went out sometimes to help on the boats, but often he would still stay at home with the old woman and they would work on pieces of scrimshaw together, at first both with the same needle and then with one each. Nishat’s pincer-hand could grip the needle firmly and move it delicately, and soon his scrimshaw began to surpass the old woman’s shaky pieces. She taught him all she knew of the art, and was overjoyed to find he had the talent which the others of her family did not.

One stormy day, Nishat and the two fisherfolk came back from the sea with a strange tale. They had been far from the shore, fishing for sauries, when out of the tossing waves a kind of ship had risen. Upon its slimy deck stood tall fish-like creatures with iron blades who had cried out harshly and approached them at a pace their small boat could not match. But when the fish-devils’ ship had grown close, it had slowed, and the crew had seemed shaken to see Nishat on the fishing-boat.

They had drifted closer and spoken in a hissing language, growing more threatening when they were not understood. Unsure of what to do, the fisherfolk had offered what was in their nets that day, but the fish-devils did not want it. Then Nishat had offered them the piece of scrimshaw he had with him, a carving of mountains on a piece of bone, and that had seemed to pacify them. They had left in their strange ship, looking back every now and then as it slid beneath the waves, and the three villagers had returned home safely.

After that day, the old woman helped Nishat make scrimshaws for every boat in the village’s docks. No-one went out fishing without one of those fine pieces in the stern, to keep them safe from the perils of the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for choosing such an interesting array of tags! I wasn't really sure what to go for, and so decided on this. It was a lot of fun to write.
> 
> This is meant to have a folktale-ish tone, which is why most of the characters lack names. 'The Shadow over Innsmouth' somewhat inspired the concept of the fish-devils, but otherwise had little influence on the story. Fish are a great basis for vaguely spooky creatures, I think, because they have very little in common with humans physically and so are difficult to relate to or empathize with on a visual level.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading this, and have a wonderful day!


End file.
